


Common Ground

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Primeval, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Archaeology, Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-18 11:26:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9382775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: Claudia Brown’s Christmas Day walk contains a lot more otherworldly women and meaningful chats about mysteriously disappearing boyfriends than she expected.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Annariel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annariel/gifts).



> A fandom_stocking 2016 gift for Annariel. :)

On the whole, Claudia felt that the English countryside in the middle of a wet December left a great deal to be desired. There were too many hills to drag a recalcitrant beagle up and too much mud for Claudia's ancient welly boots to cope with. She couldn't even haul Tom off the sofa to join her, as he had been removed to Foreign Parts on short notice, somewhat against everyone's will and to her parents' evident disappointment. Claudia had made a spiteful mental note to the effect that the Director of the Special Forces should get exceptionally tepid coffee, next time he had a meeting with Lester.

 

Claudia forged up the nearest hill into the mizzle, pulling an extremely sad Gluttony along. Gluttony was living up to her name, and the last vets' visit had included a stern lecture on proper diet and exercise for beagles, which was why Claudia's mother had insisted that the dog needed a Christmassy walk. Hero Brown had also insisted that Claudia needed a walk, to clear the cobwebs out of her head.

 

It had started to drizzle minutes after Claudia had left her parents' house, and now she was thoroughly damp. The forecasters' predictions of a white Christmas had been wetly disappointed. Gluttony was drooping as only beagles can droop, and Claudia felt much the same; but she squared her shoulders in her mother's decrepit Barbour, bent her head in its old woollen beanie to the wind, and stamped onwards.

 

By the time she got to the top of the hill, it had stopped raining at all, and the louring clouds had lightened a bit. However, both Claudia and Gluttony were covered in mud, the result of Gluttony becoming unfortunately entangled in a stile, and all parties concerned falling over.

 

"You win some, you lose some," Claudia informed the dog, who - quite rightly - whined.

 

Claudia stopped to catch her breath, and looked out over the countryside. It seemed quite quiet and peaceful now; softly misty, with a funny silvery cast to the light that was actually quite pretty, lending a certain charm to the unremittingly damp grey-green and grey-brown fields, the black ribbons of roads, the bare hedges and the huddled houses. A few rays of sunlight were trying to peek through the tumbling clouds with little success.

 

"Well, dog," Claudia said, "it could be a lot worse."

 

Gluttony did not appear to agree. Claudia let her off the lead and she didn't go anywhere.

 

"Come on, Gluttony," Claudia said. "They should have bloody well called you Sloth." She let herself through a gate, cajoled the dog through, and set off round the side of a field sloping down into a small valley, where several improbably-located barrows were bounded by a tiny wood, since neither of the farmers who owned the fields on either side were allowed to plough there. Claudia's father was fond of saying that it was a stupid, excessively concealed place to put barrows, and they ought to be excavated again, in case they were not barrows. Claudia's mother liked to point out that the barrows _had_ been excavated, in 1865, and nothing in the local museum to show for it but some very tall skeletons and a bit of funny-looking metalwork, most of it covered in varnish and glue by a well-meaning curator, if you please - so if you think you can find anything, Julius, you're welcome to try, but I tell you the Victorians did not leave anything behind. She also liked to point out that it was a rough climb up from the village, a site which had been inhabited on and off for thousands of years, if you went directly to the valley, and therefore there had probably been something about the little valley itself that mattered, beyond its visibility. So there, Julius Brown.

 

At this point Claudia usually put the kettle on and picked up a novel. She had comparatively little interest in archaeology.

 

She sauntered down the incline of the hill to the wood, periodically whistling for Gluttony, and then hopped over the stile into the wood. Gluttony followed her rather apprehensively - and then, suddenly, barked.

 

Claudia stared into the wood and could see nothing bar the odd tree, and a strange twinkle of light that sent a shiver down her spine. In case of dinosaurs, she caught Gluttony and put her on the lead. Then, in case of more normal miscreants, she took her mobile phone from her pocket, and prepared to call the police.

 

Claudia walked cautiously along the windy little dirt path, Gluttony now straining at the lead. The path wound round the tallest barrow, which was thickly overgrown with a bramble, and then paused in the middle of a little clearing.

 

Claudia also paused. In the centre of the clearing, an anomaly spun lazily in the air. A young woman had laid a blanket out against the side of one of the barrows, and was now sitting on it, a bow and arrow by one side, a long, elegant knife by the other. She had been reading, and was now eyeing Claudia with mild curiosity.

 

Gluttony whined and strained at the end of the lead, but she seemed keen to meet this person, not angry.

 

"Hush, Gluttony!" Claudia said automatically. "Heel!... Don't mind her, she's friendly."

 

The woman smiled, and it transformed her face from that of a beautiful statue to that of a dazzling woman. "So I see. Hello... Gluttony?"

 

"My parents have had a succession of dogs named after the Seven Deadly Sins," Claudia explained, with some embarrassment. "Avarice was quite a pretty name for a dog, and nobody knew what it meant except the retired judge four doors down anyway. Pride was all right. Envy kept getting mixed up with Evie on the parish council, which was unfortunate but accurate, and... well, I do wonder what my parents are going to do when they get to Lust." She coughed, to cover the fact that she was babbling. "Happy Christmas, incidentally."

 

"Christmas?" the young woman said, with polite puzzlement. Looking at her now, Claudia wasn't so sure she was young; she certainly had flawless, wrinkle-free ivory skin, extremely long black hair confined in a deceptively complex snood arrangement, and clear grey eyes without the slightest hint of crows' feet at the corners, but there was an air about her. Like she was as old as the barrows, and possibly as old as the hills. And Claudia was fairly sure that, given her pale grey cloak and green tunic - to say nothing of the mediaeval weaponry - she wasn't local.

 

Also, something about the woman's bone structure and the way she carried herself was unnerving Claudia, and she couldn't work out why.

 

"It's a festival," she said, refraining from theology or commentary on a lady's looks. "A winter festival. Did you come through the anomaly?"

 

"Excuse me?"

 

Claudia gestured silently at the offending object.

 

"Oh," said the woman. "Yes."

 

"Is there anything unfriendly on the other side?" Claudia asked.

 

The woman considered the question. "No, but I thought I might stay, to make sure. Is there anything unfriendly on this side?"

 

"No," Claudia said, putting away her phone. She didn't think the woman was trouble, despite the knife, and the bow and arrow. She had certainly made no violent moves. "But I might stay. To make sure."

 

The woman smiled. "May I say hello to your dog?"

 

"Of course," Claudia said, and let Gluttony off the lead. Gluttony trotted over to the woman, and snuffled at her outstretched hand; the woman smiled, and stroked her ears gently, and Gluttony plonked down next to her, squashing the bow and arrow and getting muddy paw prints on the woman's cloak. Claudia winced.

 

"She is lovely," the woman said.

 

"Thank you," Claudia said, shifting from foot to foot and feeling inadequate, in her ancient clothes and post-Christmas dinner stupor. She had barely bothered with makeup, although they were all in the habit of dressing up for Christmas; she had been too cross and unhappy that Tom wouldn't be there, and it made her snappish and ready to cut off her nose to spite her face. She felt that a little mascara would have been a great help under these particular circumstances, though.

 

"Do sit down," the woman said politely. "What's your name?"

 

Claudia felt as if she were being invited to sit down on her own sofa. "Claudia," she said, and sat down on the knife side of the woman, pushing the knife casually to one side. The woman's eyes did not miss her gesture, but she did nothing, merely closed her book - beautifully bound in gold-tooled blue leather - and laid it on her lap. "What's yours?"

 

"Arwen," said the woman. It wasn't as strange a name as Claudia might have expected.

 

"Where are you from?" Claudia asked, crossing her legs.

 

"That is a complicated question," Arwen said. She was stroking Gluttony's ears again, and Gluttony was just lying there, wagging her tail ferociously. "My father's house is in Imladris."

 

"Oh," Claudia said. "I'm afraid I don't know it."

 

"I suspect it is in a different world," Arwen said, much as Claudia might have said 'it's Tuesday'.

 

"Right," Claudia said, recovering herself. "Well, I'm from England, and that's where we are now."

 

Arwen hummed in response, managing to convey polite interest and warmth in a single non-verbal syllable. "Are there many of these portals in England?"

 

"Too many," Claudia sighed.

 

Arwen smiled. "You sound tired."

 

"They're tiring," Claudia said. "You see, we have to keep them secret..."

 

Arwen looked down at her - she was much taller than Claudia - and raised one delicate eyebrow.

 

"... and not everything that comes out of them is as nice as you," Claudia concluded. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

 

"Why are they secrets?" Arwen countered.

 

"I don't honestly know any more," Claudia admitted. She could reel off a list of good, solid justifications when Nick asked her, but for some reason, faced with Arwen's clarity, all the things Claudia might have said withered and died. "Ask my boss. Er, my employer," she clarified, because Arwen looked a little puzzled. "It's not my choice, to keep it a secret."

 

It had been her first instinct, though. In some ways Claudia was ashamed of that.

 

Arwen nodded, and a few minutes of comfortable silence followed. The anomaly did not weaken; Claudia was getting to know what that looked like.

 

"Tell me about Christmas," Arwen said, thoughtfully.

 

"It's a holiday," Claudia said uncertainly, wondering how much religion to introduce into this. "In the middle of winter. We come together with family and friends, we eat a lot, we exchange presents... we celebrate the birth of someone who lived and died and, er, lived again, a long time ago. At least that's the theory."

 

"Theory? What is theoretical - the family celebration, or the thing you are celebrating?"

 

Claudia grinned despite herself, and rested her elbows on her knees. "Well, that depends who you ask."

 

"I see," Arwen said dryly. "Are you celebrating with family today?"

 

"Yes," Claudia said. "Well, I'm walking the dog right now, and my sister and her husband and children are at his family's until tomorrow, and my - and Tom couldn't be here. But yes. I'm celebrating."

 

"It sounds like it," Arwen said very dryly.

 

"I'm sure it's illegal to be both as beautiful as you are _and_ sarcastic," Claudia sighed, dropping her head into her hands.

 

"What?"

 

"Humour," Claudia said, "I was trying to be funny - ignore me, I had too much white wine with lunch."

 

"It happens," Arwen said very gravely, and she pulled her knees up and looped her arms around them, just like Claudia. Except that Claudia didn't have seed pearls and silk ribbon braided into waist-length hair, and nor was she otherworldly - literally or figuratively. No, Claudia Brown belonged on Planet Earth, feet firmly planted on the floor.

 

Some days Claudia thought that was a good thing.

 

"Who's Tom?" Arwen asked.

 

"My boyfriend," Claudia answered, and when Arwen didn't look like she understood, clarified: "My partner, my, er-"

 

"Lover?"

 

"Yes," Claudia said, going slightly pink and ducking her head. "He's a soldier. He was called away."

 

Arwen was silent for a long moment.

 

"What about you?" Claudia said gently.

 

"Much the same," Arwen said, rather sadly, and then added a further remark in a liquid, complex tongue Claudia didn't know. "Much the same."

 

"Bloody men," Claudia said bracingly. "Literally _and_ figuratively."

 

Arwen gave a bell-like laugh. "Yes, and they will come back covered in mud and smelling foul, and we will tell them they are late and disgusting, and be extremely cool for - oh, at _least_ a day."

 

Claudia snorted. "An hour, maybe, I don't think my self-control is that good."

 

"Well," Arwen conceded gracefully. "I am not human, and have a great deal more time on my hands."

 

"Aren't you?" Claudia said, and looked at Arwen again. Perhaps not, Claudia thought, and wasn't entirely surprised. "No, of course you aren't. How silly of me."

 

Arwen half-smiled. "Not silly, really. Not the way you think."

 

"Tell me some other time," Claudia said, and nodded at the ball of shattered light. "The anomaly is getting weaker."

 

"Ah," Arwen said, and got to her feet. Claudia got up too, clipping Gluttony back onto the lead and helping Arwen shake out the blanket.

 

She was very tall, Claudia thought, very tall indeed. And if the brooch in the museum had not been restored with so heavy a hand it might have looked like the one she wore.

 

"Are they ancestors of yours, in the barrows?" Claudia asked, tucking her hands into her pockets.

 

Arwen smiled with the sadness of ages, and the peace of time. "No," she said, "contemporaries."

 

"I'm sorry," Claudia said.

 

"It was a very long time ago." Arwen swooped down, and kissed Claudia's forehead; Claudia's mouth fell open. "Well met, Claudia Brown."

 

She slipped through the anomaly, and both she and it valued.

 

"I never told you my full name!" Claudia exclaimed, and then let out a heavy sigh and rolled her eyes. The barrows were thousands of years old: more than likely she would never have to deal with Arwen again.

 

"Bloody woman," Claudia said to Gluttony, who looked curiously depressed that Arwen was gone. "Come on, dog, let's go."

 

It rained on the way home. Both Claudia and the dog arrived back soaking and plastered with mud.

 

"Nice walk?" her father said, opening the door and visibly refraining from comment.

 

"Edifying," Claudia said, and didn't bother to explain.

 

 

Tom arrived on Boxing Day night. He was filthy and smelled extremely unpleasant, though a clear attempt at making himself presentable had taken place, and he looked exhausted.

 

Claudia told him he was late and disgusting, and stuffed a sandwich full of leftover turkey and Boxing Day ham into his hands. Then she ran him a bath, and held out for at least fifteen whole minutes before going to join him.

 


End file.
